Annmarie had a whole list of things for me to do today.  All of them outside in the freezing cold.  Her number one concern was the back fence.  The back creek had started to dam up against my fence.   This is not good and could lead to the water tearing down my entire fence.  So I needed to get out there and dig out the tumbleweeds and leaves and raise the panels above the water level.  I had every intention of just going outside and doing that this morning, but I got distracted.
I found someone on Craigslist selling hair sheep over the weekend.  Annmarie called them and arranged for us to purchase and transport them home this up coming Saturday.  We got a good deal $60/each.  They are still teenagers.  I believe they are only 3 months old.  At 6 months old they go into estrus.  Now the problem with this is we still do not have  trailer.  Plus, the racks on our pickup were pretty bad, so I have been slowly taking them apart to use as wire tighteners in the fence I have been building during the Summer.  Luckily for me, I slowed down on the fence building and there was still uprights in the pickup bed to build onto.  So another one of my jobs for today was to build new racks for the sheep, plus the lady selling us the sheep was worried about the cold and weather so it needed a cap to keep the weather out.  Sarah reminded me this morning that we needed another feeder for the sheep and wouldn’t it be nice if the feeder was just under the open window where the baby enclosures were.
So I went into the barn leanto and moved the baby enclosures and drug another feeder from the other end of the barn into the sheep area.  I re stacked the hay to get it away from the open window and filled the feeder from all the loose hay on the ground.  I scavenged the wire doors from the front of the baby enclosures for the back of the pickup.  Next I went to the old granary and dug around inside for some scrap wood.  I ended up cutting a large chunk of conveyor belt (made out of wood, canvas and leather) to use as the walls.  I pulled the pickup into the yard so I would have easy access to power and began my new pickup racks.  I added a four foot deep lid made out of two pieces of OSB with a blue tarp sandwiched between them.

 Who really knows where the conveyor belt came from?  It was probably some old combine but I don’t know for sure.  It was just sitting there not doing anything.  Eventually, I am going to use up all those old things and go wanting.  But at least they will have had a second life.

Now nothing goes this smoothly.  I had to take a break before building the racks to cut down a pine tree (the chain saw was on the old house porch in my way).  So I fired up the chainsaw, it was fairly easy, and it died.  No gas, so I filled the gas and oil and fired it up again.  I went over to the tree, decided my plan of attack (the tree needed to fall into the orchard not our yard or on the house, of course it was leaning toward the back creek) and started cutting.  I would have made more progress with a butter knife.  After five minutes I had to stop and go sharpen the chain saw blade (another 30 minute operation) and then reattempt cutting the tree down.  It took me 3 tries to get the notch right and then when I came in from the backside the tree fell just where I wanted it to go.  I guess all that hard manual labor cutting firewood as a kid paid off.
So after finishing the pickup rack I went out to lock the chickens up and every door was wide open.  So as I am closing the door inside the coop that goes to the supply room (my chicken supplies and food and access to all the nest boxes is in a separate room that the chickens cannot get to.  I hear frantic scrabbling, some of the kittens are inside the coop.  So I had to leave the inside door open so they could get out.  I did lock the chicken yard gate down so the cats will have to spend the night with the chickens.  If they don’t like the chickens then they will be a little more careful tomorrow.

I looked out the back kitchen window at lunch and noticed the back creek was running.  This is very bad.  The back creek is a runoff creek only.  It normally runs from late February to June.  It is December and it is running.  This is a first for us in the last three years.  That means we are way too warm.  It has been over freezing for the last three days and we have had a chinook wind come in and melt all of the snow away.  The really bad part is my new fence had to be improved over the creek to keep the sheep from escaping.  If the water is going to keep running I need to go out and prop the panels up out of the water so my fence doesn’t get ripped out.  That would be very very bad.  So I really hope it gets another 15 degrees colder so this problem goes away.  I have been on vacation for two weeks so I have been unable to get my cheap chicken food, so tomorrow I will have to pick up some expensive food for the chickens.  They are almost out.  I keep hearing the coyotes at night howling and carrying on the last few nights.  So far we have not forgotten to lock up the chickens and I have not lost any in a while.

We had company during the Thanksgiving holiday, Doug and Linda.  As always we truly enjoyed the visit.  Doug always helps me with a project when they come.  This year we finished the cabinet for the deep sink in the utility room.  We made it out of tongue and groove oak flooring.  It took us a day, but turned out very nice.  Now I only have to order the drain and the faucet and get the plumber to come set the sink.  Of course I will need to bring the 150# sink into the house and clean it out (it has been on the old house porch for three years).  This sink was the very first thing I ever bought for the house.  I purchased it before I did anything on the house.  It just never got installed because there was no cabinet.  The utility room had a deep sink in it before, but it was concrete and had several cracks in it.  It was not salvageable.
Annmarie and Linda got the craft closet all stocked up with yarn and various craft stuffs.  It looks great and surprisingly there was not as much yarn as I thought there would be.

Sink spot

Sides and back completed.  Just needs the front and the door.

Here it is!!  I still need to add the hinges, door latch and finish the wood.  I added a large backsplash due to all the water damage that was on the wall from the old deep sink.  It turned out great.  The piece in the back is the door.  We made it moveable so we could pull it out and drop the sink in then attach it to the wall.  I will get the ball rolling on the parts we need to finish this so there will be no more egg washing in the kitchen sink or filling of animal waterers in the kitchen sink or washing of the dog.  The little things that annoy the wife!  lol.

Well it only got to -6 here last night according to our thermometer (which is out of the wind and has brand new batteries in both the sensor and thermometer this month).  Add on the foot of snow we got in the last 2 days and it is official, Winter is here.  The lousy party about this cold is trying to keep the chickens watered.  Their water freezes up all the time because there is no heat in the coop.  The chickens don’t need heat to survive that is why they have feathers.  The coop is watertight and insulated so the heat they do self generate does stay in the coop. With all this snow on the ground the chickens won’t come outside the coop.  It makes for cramped living quarters inside.  They truly hate change.  Last year I shoveled a path out in the chicken yard for them so that they did not have to go into the deep snow.  It didn’t help, they still stayed inside.  So this year I didn’t bother yet.  The one good thing is the chickens will eat the snow for their water.  I have a heated dog bowl just outside for water, but the chickens won’t go to it.  They eat the snow because it is closer and ignore the dog bowl.  So for now it is snow for water.
Unfortunately, this still complicates the quail thing.  I had a self waterer in the quail enclosure that was doing fine but -6 did not help it.  It was frozen solid.  So I added some hot water to it this morning and tonight we will have to change it out again.  This is going to be an issue for me if I add in more quail.  I will need power and a way to water them in the Winter next year.  I added hot water to the self nipple waterer inside for the chickens.  It had a small 1/8 inch ice film on top and that was it.  I was surprised at that but I manipulated the nipple underneath and could not get a drop of water to come out.  So I added a small 5 gallon fish tank heater to the five gallon bucket and plugged it in.  It sits down near the nipples at the bottom of the bucket.  I may need to take some duct tape and insulation and rig a wrap to go around the bucket.  The duct tape cover will keep the chickens from eating the insulation.
We have all started to pet the sheep when we feed them in the morning.  The two new teenage female ewes let me pet on them this morning while they were eating hay.  The new teenage ram, Lucky, would not let me touch him.  We need to get him tamed down.  Persistence on our part will pay off.

I did it, I finished the library.  I am currently doing the happy dance even if you cannot see it.  I am way, way ahead of schedule.  The plan was to have it done, but I don’t think Annmarie thought it was going to happen (I didn’t really either, but I kept telling her it was “the plan”.  My plans don’t always (never) go as planned so she was surprised).  The light took forever to hang.  Lots of parts and they have to go in a certain order.  It is not too bad when you have lots of chain to hang the light from, but the ceiling is low so I only used one link.  It makes for a tight fit.  The instructions say to use two people.  The only one I did that with is the landing light, but that thing weighs in around 50# and is three feet across and three feet tall.  Far more than one person can hold and do 16 feet in the air.
I wiped down the closet doors and lubricated the door rollers.  I even put in new door guides.  Because the carpet is missing now and they had shortened the doors I had to put in a shim to hold the door guides at the right height.  Once the hardwood floor is in place I won’t need that any more.  I put the end piece of pegboard in today and got it all primed and painted.

I even bug bombed under the house and in the attic today.  Sprout (Brussel Griffin dog) and I had to hang out in the car this morning.  We went to the hardware store to get bolts to install the light (it doesn’t come with hanging bolts, big surprise there) and then we went to Pendleton to Sherwin Williams to get paint cards for Sarah.  She wants to paint her room.  Her initial color choices were purple and silver with a room size dragon on the wall.  We nixed that.  Second choice was silver and black.  I got her some color cards so she can make her third and fourth choice.  We are thinking about a black divider between a high and low color, but we want her to paint a piece of trim black and we can nail it in place.  No trying to cover over black at a later date.
Annmarie has decided I need to install the dining room light now that I appear to have some extra time before Thanksgiving.  I had to make a custom holder and shim out the ceiling for the living room light.  I told her I was actually going to have to take apart the living room light just to see how I did it.  It has been some time and it is working good, so I want to duplicate that effort.  I may have time this week.  No promises, but I will try.  Not sure what I am going to do if all the lights are installed (I still have to install the lights in the upstairs hallway and make the stair lights work).
Sarah took some pictures of the Sunset today.  She is getting very good at taking pictures.

Sunset from our front porch, Sarah took this photograph.