We were tidying up, and Steve stumbled upon this poem he penned a few years ago.  He’s since moved it back to the kitchen table every time I move it off the table, so I’m inferring that he would like it to be immortalized somehow.  While I work out that how, I’m putting it here so it doesn’t get lost.  So, for your enjoyment……

An Opportunity
by Steve Hardin

Life is an opportunity
Some of us will seek
Some souls will surrender
Others may never settle
Is it really a journey
Or merely an opportunity
A chance to love
The joy of creating
The sadness of acceptance
The strength in integrity
Death is the real opportunity
May we all have the privilege of choice
The richness in embracing a new life
The magnificence of a new journey

Steve’s been doing so much work he’s having a hard timing keeping up with the blog entries, so I’m helping out a bit.  We’ve actually had quite a bit going on this summer.  One of my goals for the summer was to give the kitchen an update.  I was tired of the orange Formica.  Just for a refresher, this is what the kitchen has looked like since we moved in.

We weren’t quite ready to bite off the cost of new countertops, and besides, the countertops were fine, other than the color.  They are solid wood and actually still in pretty good shape – other than being orange.  So, we decided to take a chance and used a paint-on treatment from a company named Gianni that is supposed to mimic the look of granite.  I am not known for my artistic abilities, and this was one project that I actually mostly did.  Sarah helped with the base coat, and Steve did the final clear coat, but I did the part that actually shows and make the pattern.  To say I was nervous would be an understatement, but I am actually quite pleased with how it turned out.  This is what the kitchen looks like now.

Even the yellow cabinets look better with the brown granite instead of the yellow.   I’m not sure how well it will wear, but the cost was incredibly reasonable, and the appearance is so much nicer, that I’m willing to baby it along.  We’ll invest in a few cutting boards to serve as trivets and to be continually handy so that nothing damaging is set on the countertop, and since standing water is a no-no on this surface, the dish drainer will not get to live on the counter.  This does not make me sad.  This winter, we will tile the backsplash and around the window.  I’m very pleased with the current state, but am also excited to see the final outcome this winter.  Stay tuned.

On top of that, progress on the barn continues slowly.  Steve has changed his plans a bit on the cupolas.  The new design will take a bit longer, but will be more aesthetically pleasing.  In his heat-befuddled state last week, he made a truly regrettable comment to me that led to some discussion of his plans on that day, and followed by a noticeable and intentional avoidance of the subject on my part.  Yesterday, he announced that he would be putting wood siding on the cupola.  His previous plan had been to wrap them in tin, which would have made them match the roof, but be ugly.  I was not impressed.  The downside of his new plan is that each cupola is a four-day project.  He figures they will finish this first one before they have to move on back to the tin.  Then he will put a temporary cover over the second hole to get us through the winter.  The barn will officially become a three-summer project, but should be finally finished next year.

 

Steve posted a picture of the labrynth he created with the electric fence, and described the challenges of containing the sheep in a relatively small space with it.  What he failed to tell you was that he had surrounded the entire house with the electric fence, which is all in all, not so bad, since the idea was to let the sheep into the part of the yard we wanted them to eat, and no other part.  But, he did not leave a path for humans to get out.  The only ingress or egress was over a laid-down portion of the (turned off) electric fence.  Bear in mind that this fence is a net, and is too long to step over when laid down.  Also bear in mind that I wear healed boots to work, and that I usually come home with my hands full.  You can see where this is going, can’t you?  The fact that the charger is not on the side of the fence that is accessible from the house just adds to the comedy factor.

Yesterday, I came home and noticed that vast portions of the electric fence were not as I had left them that morning.  Sarah was home sick, so I had left her inside with the dogs (they have access to grass to do their thing, and turned on the fence as I left the yard.  Something had obviously gone wrong, so I went to the end of the house, pulled two stakes and laid down a portion of the fence.  Mind you that I did this with my briefcase, purse, and groceries all in my hands.  As I was stepping on the fence, I could feel it grabbing at my shoes (netting, remember), and was trying to step carefully.  Apparently I was not stepping carefully enough, because I was about half-way across the net when it grabbed my foot and held on.  Yes, I went down.  Unfortunately, I went down when I was close enough to the porch to catch myself on the edge of it with both forearms.  It’s better than my chin, I admit, but dang!  That hurt.  Oh yeah, and I spilled my coffee too.  So, being the understanding and supportive wife, I called my husband, who is of course, at work in the Tri Cities, and explained to him that is was not a good idea to not allow for an easy path for people to enter and exit.  He will plan better next time.

On another, note, Pilot Rock is under a flood warning until noon today.  This does not surprise me, as I watched our creek rise nearly a foot in 15 minutes as I was cooking dinner last night.  It was pretty impressive.  Monica and I went out and raised the panels that Steve had supposedly made easy to raise.  Not so much.  The panels are held together with carabiners, and they had shifted a bit so that it took us about 30 minutes, and much silent swearing on my part to get the clips off and the lower panels removed.  They had already begun to collect debris, and were bowing out in the direction of flow, which only made things even more interesting.  Eventually we prevailed, but it was not as easy as advertised.  But, the fence is now clear of the creek, and the creek is still mostly within its banks so no harm, no foul.  There is a log that is collecting tumble-weeds and creating a wide spot, but it’s too heavy for me to move, and I can’t get to it to get a chain on it, so it’s going to have to stay where it is for a while.  I’ll have Steve take a look when he gets home.

Continuing the ramdomness, we’re still feeding.  The sheep ate an entire bale in about 45 minutes last night, and were still hungry.  I fed them more, along with the horses and the cows.  The cows had been ignoring the hay, but now they are breaking into Mom’s yard, so they are getting fed too.  If they don’t start behaving, they may have to move to another pasture, but for now, we’re still feeding every night.  It’s kind of odd because everything is green, but apparently there’s not much real food value yet.  The sheep are all pretty scrawny.  Hay and grain should fix it.
 

This morning, I went out at six to feed everyone, check for new babies, and water anyone who needed it.  Last night, Sarah had told me that there were two sets of twins in with the main herd.  Steve is out of town taking a class for work, but he called last night so I asked him if he had moved the oldest lambs in with the main herd.  He said he hadn’t.  He had not related the happening from the other morning to me, but now that I’ve read that post, I’m thinking that the ewes snuck in with their babies and didn’t get noticed in all the chaos.  Everyone is doing fine, so all is well.  In addition to the lamb that Zeke found, we have another set of new twins in the jugs.  I heard them hollering yesterday morning when I let the dogs out at five, and found them both still wet and wobbly.  Momma was not as attentive as I would have liked, but that is why they spend the first few days in a jug.  She has now adapted, and the babies are doing fine.  

Everyone is now getting fed morning and night.  If I don’t feed the cows in the morning, they get out into the CRP, so morning chores take a little longer, but chasing them out of the CRP was getting old.  Besides, there really isn’t much forage left, so it seems cruel to not give the something in the morning.  The other thing that is relevant to this story is that the horses are not sharing their area well when it comes to feed.  Mahogany keep chasing Meeka off the feeder so we’ve started feeding Meeka outside, just to make sure she actually gets to eat.

This is relevant because as I was feeding the cows, two of them. Went through the gate I had just come out, and found Meeka’s feed.  They settled right in, partly because Meeka had left her feed to snag the little bit I had dropped in the way to the cows’ feeder.  These two little cows did not, of course, follow me back out the gate with the last flake that was destined for their feeder, so I gave it to Meeka instead.  Now I’ve got two cows in the barnlot, and two coup outside the barnlot.  Either location is actually acceptable, but it would be better to have all four together.  I’ll fix it tonight when I have the time.

At least there weren’t any new babies to take care of.

Lead ewe and her babies from last night.

This is the largest concentration of lambs I think we’ve had since we started with the sheep.  Now, this is how Dad did it, except that he did it with over 100 ewes, and had to check on them about every 4 hours because they needed more assistance and supervision than our little flock does.  However, we are beginning to have some issues. 

I came home from church this morning, to see Zeke out harassing a single sheep in the ram pasture.  Now, Zeke harassing is not that unusual – it is his preferred activity whenever he is out of sight of a human.  But, the single sheep kind of tripped some alarms, so I went in and discussed the fact that Zeke was out unsupervised with Sarah, and then sent her out to check on the sheep.  Sure enough, there was another baby.  Predictably, there were troubles getting mamma and baby into a jug. 

Sarah couldn’t get the ewe to cooperate, so she called me.  I changed clothes, and went out to the barn.  Mamma and baby were together and doing fine, but mamma is wild as a March hare and is having nothing to do with us.  We tried the usual tricks.  We started easy by picking up the baby and putting it in a jug.  The theory is that when baby cries, mamma goes in and we can close the gate.  Not this time.  Mamma came to the edge of the jug and called baby out.  Baby is mobile enough that he/she totters on out to mamma and our manipulation failed.  We tried leaving baby with mamma and herding them both into the jug, since baby is keeping up fine.  No dice.  We eventually resorted to putting baby into a jug so he/she wouldn’t get trampled while we caught mamma.  This involved lots of running around by sheep, and some running by both Sarah & I, but I eventually got mamma caught, and walked her into the jug that baby was in.  Sarah shut the gate behind us and I was in the process of swinging my second leg over the panel to get out of the jug when I hear Sarah exclaim, “Are you kidding me?”  I turned and looked, and sure enough, mamma had jumped the gate, leaving the lamb in the jug. 



See – baby is keeping up just fine.

At that point, I decided that since baby was up and moving and obviously keeping up with mamma, they could stay out with the main herd for today.  Maybe tomorrow morning after everyone settles down, Steve & I can get them into the nursery pen with the other ewes and their lambs.  For now, they are both doing fine.