Battened down

I got Ms. Misty moved one pen over today, and it wasn’t that hard. She really wants to be behind a fence right now, and when I just left the gate open and let her choose to go in with gentle pressure from behind, she walked in. Whew. Having her out the day before a major Nor’easter would NOT be fun. But now the pens are far more balanced — her plus 4 lambs in one, Sue and his four ewes in another, and Miguel has his six ewes, plus Leon (my wether). I’d like to move Leon into Sue’s pen, then we’ll be 6-7-4+llama, which is as balanced as we can be, but it’s not crucial, and he’s nowhere near as easy to move as Misty.

The only chickie news today is of the cute and interesting type. This crew spent the day hanging with the pigs, per usual. I was there when she decided it was time to come home, though. She flew to the fence and called them. They randomly either flew there (while squawking madly) or whined and cried as they tiptoed across the snow. When they’d all reached the staging area, they sat there cute as could be, all fluffed up for a while, like she was letting them catch their breath. Then she flew to the coop hatch door, waited in the door, calling them, and one by one they all made it inside. It was just kind of fun to watch her in action. I like it when she’s counting well!

After a failed attempt at lighting one of our brush piles, we mostly cut and brought in firewood for the woodstove in our bedroom. We have random piles of firewood down on the ground, not cut to length or anything like that, all over the property. We have lots of wood stacked for the big stove in the basement, but the bedroom stove takes wee little pieces, and we just haven’t had time to get to it, so we’ve been piling on extra covers instead. But with the storm coming, we really wanted to have enough wood to sleep comfortably for a few nights, so having that feels good already. We used to line the back deck with wood for the bedroom. It’d be nice to find the time to do that again. (nostalgia!)

We’re as battened down for the storm as we can be. Everyone was fed just that bit extra, all inside their sheds. The winds are supposed to get really heavy as the storm winds down tomorrow — 50 mph gusts, they say. C’mon roofs, please hold. They are forecasting about a foot for us, which doesn’t seem too bad, to be honest. A foot — that’s easy! (says the chick from West Texas) I still (mostly) think snow is fun.