There’s a cool group on Flickr called A day in the life. Four times a year, at the start of the new season, people from around the world submit five photos (and an optional one video) to the pool documenting that day. I started in the spring this year, so have 2008’s season changes all documented nicely. It’s a really cool concept.
My day started per usual, with a blizzard starting as the sun came up. We’d heard that it was going to start “mid-morning” but somehow that never happens so we were up and at the chores as soon as the sun came up. To be honest, we never really got the break in the snow that was supposed to happen on Saturday. It’d been snowing softly non-stop for three days, really.
The morning chores start by letting the water fowl out of their pen, bringing them a bucket of water and filling their feed dish, which the turkeys promptly monopolize while the ducks and geese get giddy over fresh water.
Then it’s time to feed the pigs. We’d gotten a pretty good haul from the food bank yesterday, so breakfast for the pigs was quite the collection of random stuff. There was six gallons of organic lemonade (expiration date of 12/17/08) at 2000 calories per gallon. There were boxes of mixed fruit (all squishy) and mixed vegetables, mostly green beans, not their favorite but oh well! There was a huge bag of day-old bagels, their favorite treat ever. There was a crate of corn on the cob, which everyone loves. (I stole some for the sheep and horses.) Frank tallied up the calorie count and estimated about 30,500 calories in the whole batch, for seven pigs, giving them each a breakfast of about 4300 calories each. We do that twice a day. They really do eat like pigs! If the haul from the food bank isn’t this rich, we give them pellets instead, but it’s nicer for all concerned for them to have this much variety. They also have all you can eat hay available to them as well.
The rest of the chores involved filling the water for the horses, the sheep and the cows. We’ve got a hose working in the basement for all of them, which is nice. Aaron showed up in time to haul water for the pigs and the rams. The horses needed a new bale of hay, so Frank and I got that done even though technically they could have waited until after lunch, but we wanted to get it done before the snow got worse. I milked Ella Mae, of course, and then we were really as done as it was going to get. The snow was coming down at about two inches an hour by 9:00 am when we all came in. The only other thing that had to be done outside was feed the pigs in the evening, and put the birds to bed when it got dark. Storms are much nice when the power holds.
The dogs just loved the snow and wanted to stay out and play in it all day long. I took a short little video clip of Bjarki and his favorite jolly ball early in the day. That is HIS ball and she is not allowed to touch it, though she teases him all the time with almost touching it and he is forced to chase her away. He’s a crazy man with that ball and entertains himself for hours with it. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring it in at some point and fear we may not see it again until Spring.