Holy Goat!

Cheryl and I were talking the other day and she really wants to have goats for next summer (bring year one).  The plan has them scheduled for year two.  So this morning I spent more time then I should have and cleared around the first paddock, getting all the weeds and over-growth away from the old cattle fence (which is really just six strands of barbed-wire poultry nailed into anything in the way). I worked off and on all day on the fence.  Also I found a cattle fence not far from the one that I was working on, it looks to be in good shape and is one of the 4x8 rectangle rolls of fence, it might just be enough to fence in the first paddock and then I'll just string the barbed-wire through it to tighten the openings a bit.  There is still about three days of work left on the fence but I think it might be possible as long as I can grow what they need to eat for next year.

In getting ready to take down the barbed-wire fence I first had to remove the electrical fencing line that ran one side of the paddock.  Nate wanted to help with this.  It was a blast watching him try to walk through the long grass, in his little yellow rain boots (it has been rainy lately so the fields are a little soft).  I was holding his hand and it seem more like dragging him then walking, but he was laughing the whole time and kept rambling about how it was like being on a skate board.  When I had to stop and work on something all I had to do was give him my nettle noise to play with.

During one of the breaks I took from the fence work I tried to till were next years garden will be.  The tiller had a flat and had not been run in about a year and a bit.  Getting it started was easy, almost to easy.  The flat, while I don't have a pump, so it is still flat and that means that I still have to till the garden and after being in the front paddock all morning, I might till it also and throw down some alfalfa to grow over winter maybe mix in some timothy also.

I now have just over a bush cord of wood in the basement, cut and split.  When we bought the house the furnace couldn't be W.E.T. certified, so we had to buy a new one.  This has been a hugh head ache, the place where we bought it doesn't install them themselves, but they do recommend a company to do it.  Well, that company came out and took a look at the current set-up while we were waiting for the new furnace to be delivered.  They left and didn't leave a business card phone number or name (Co.).  So we waited and waited and then I was cutting one day and thought that I should call to find out what size logs would fit in the furnace and at the same time found out that the furnace was in.  Longer story short the installers hadn't called and then when I continued to call they had some excuse that there are so many set-up types for the furnace that we bought that they didn't know how to price it because they didn't know what needed to be done.  Well I'm not going to go into detail about that, but they were here they seen the set-up and they knew what needed to be done.  That just doesn't make me feel to confident in there ability, not to mention the customer service aspect (having to basically call everyday to get them to return my call).  So I have read the manual and I might just try to do it myself and then call someone once I hit something that trips me up. Tomorrow I'm going to take the existing furnace duct work apart and have a closer look.  And for now the fireplace in the living room is doing just fine,  I write this as I am sweating just sitting here.

Hopefully I will get the skids soon and I can start making plans for chicken tractors.  But for now I will just keep working on cutting wood and fixing the paddock while the weather still holds.

God Bless