A Death in the Farm Family and a Trip to Town (Chehalis)

09/10/2008 Wednesday: Foggy in the am and sunny in the pm.

I tossed a bale of hay to the Dexters and turned off the power to the fences so that I could let the Herefords into another paddock. They're in N4 now.

The baby Boer doeling that was sick was dead when I got down to do my chores this morning. She did not look well yesterday so I didn't hold out much hope for her survival. I'd brought down a syringe containing the LA-200 antibiotic which I decided to use on the goat with foot rot to see if that would finally fix the problem. I've been fighting it for weeks. We'll see if it helps.

I fed a bale of broken hay to the Herefords just in case they wanted a change from grass. The paddock I moved them into today is slightly smaller than yesterday's. I thought supplementing them with some hay might help.

Dang, I want my tractor back with the new fork attachment so that I can take a round bale of hay out to them. And put one in with the Dexters. With any luck I'll get my tractor back this weekend. Moving individual square bales around by hand is a PITA.

I moved a bunch of stuff away from the walls on the upper deck - mostly the dog house. Then Chas and I went downstairs to move the wrecked couch off the bottom deck and out onto the lawn. We moved my Union loom out onto the lawn, too.

Then I quickly made myself some breakfast before we headed into town. Today was Chas's chiropractic visit. We had our usual list of things to do: banking, library, grocery shopping and feed store. We also hit Rhodda to get more paint. Our house is going to be beautiful when we get it done.

I'll also be painting two outbuildings, the tool shed and the potting shed. Maybe I'll do the tool shed tomorrow. It actually came pretty clean with the pressure washing yesterday.

I also stopped by Country Tractor while Chas was in having his back adjusted. I purchased two O rings. I was smart. I stapled both rings to the schematic and noted the date I purchased the rings on the schematic. All the tractor materials will go into one of the bins I got from Mary H (which I haven't had a chance to wash out yet).

When we got back from town I phoned Deana to see why she wasn't painting. She's left the pressure washer and her stepladder on the deck and Lucky wasn't about to let her on the deck since neither Chas nor I was home and he was chained up. He didn't growl or snarl but he did curl his lip up. That was enough for Deana. Off she went home but did come back.

She pressure washed both the upper deck and the lower and did some painting. Tomorrow she and I will finish the back of the house (the south side which is also the weather side). I'll hold the ladder while she sprays. She's almost got it all done but since the land slopes down sharply, it's hard to set a ladder up. We tried digging a hole for the top hill side but the ground is so dry we hardly made a dint. I suggested she pour water into the hole but she forgot to. I'll try to find some blocks and a couple of pieces of rebar to pound in to support the blocks. Maybe that will stabilize the ladder for her.

The sister to the dead doeling was so bummed out about being separated from her sister that she yelled the entire day. I finally decided for the sake of both of our sanities that I would put her in with the big goats and let her duke it out with them. Before I did I put a collar on her so that I could catch her if I needed to do some petting and gentling. When evening chores came and I put out the feed for all the goats she muscled her way into the feeder with the other goats and seemed to be doing just fine. That was a bit of a relief.