Saturday, March 15, 2014

Does this screen make my butt look fat?

I got a shiny new computer. After several weeks of trying to make do by cobbling together two semi-broken computers, I threw in the towel and got a new computer. That took another couple of weeks. Finally it has arrived and I am back online. One intact computer, one intact screen.

In the meantime, a lot has happened.

Most importantly and not a moment too soon -- Father Winter has taken a hike. The polar vortex has returned to the pole. We are, relatively speaking, warm. We survived the winter in the new house with only three furnace breakdowns and one propane outage. Yay? Eh, we survived.

When the snow finally melted and the ice thawed enough to open the doors to the barn, the ponies and other critters were knee deep in nasty winter bedding. I'm gradually cranking through the clean out, one stall at a time, but it's a monumental task and I swear I will never get caught unprepared for winter again. Did I learn nothing from nursery rhymes and fairy tales? Apparently not. Anyway, I hereby swear I will keep the barn doors free of all muck at all times and never again risk having them freeze shut for an entire season.

The big ponies have moved back into the back pasture barn. That barn is still a disaster, but I got the crucial door to open, so back they went. They are happier back there with the big pasture, even though the grass is thin and they come in hungry in the evening.

We've had two new sets of arrivals since I wrote last -- two icelandic sheep and two alpacas. The icelandics act more like the alpacas -- skittish -- than they do like their cousins the lincoln longwools. Interesting really. In other ways, the alpacas are a riot. I am convinced that Dr. Seuss must have known alpacas at some point. I will have to update my character list.

The goats weathered the winter nicely in their little insulated coats, but Rosetyler had enough last week once it warmed up and finally got hers off. She being the flightiest and wildest of all the goats, I let it go. I'll have to take them all off soon anyway or risk overheating them. They are so spectacularly clean underneath the coats that I am seriously considering keeping them coated all the time. They'd hate it though, so I'm torn.

Last I wrote I was gearing up for a weaving challenge. I will post more on that later, but can I just say WOW. I had set myself the task of making one piece of horsehair fabric to replace the tattered cover on my old messenger bag. I finished the first piece pretty quickly, but it was pretty sad really. It looked great from a distance, but up close was a hairy mess. I am, nonetheless, hooked. Completely besotted with horsehair fabric. I assume this crush will pass, but in the meantime I am on a quest to figure out how to do it well.

Oh, and I officially filed my taxes as a farm for the first time ever. Woohoo. That was pretty exciting. Now I have to actually sell some fiber. Working on that!






6 comments:

  1. Wow! I am just catching up with your posts. Can't imagine not being able to open the doors to the barn! And it sounds like you have quite a few animals now. How is the weaving coming along? Sara (thecrazysheeplady) is a good friend and I have been keeping up with the progress she has made. What a fun thing to do. We had a little melting here after going through one horrific blizzard...now it's 0 with the windchill. Hopefully the big snow part is over. Really looking forward to spring....if it ever decides to show up.

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    1. Thankfully, we are further south than you and have seen the end of the really bad stuff. I am POSITIVE. Ha, I like to say that all winter long, knowing that eventually I will be right. :)

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  2. PS...I forgot to react to your apple woes. Good story about the phone...I get hay in everything too.
    So what computer did you get? I am a mac person too.

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    1. You know, I very nearly bailed on Apple this time. I love Macs, but I've gone through three Macs in four years. Then I realized, the two laptops were so short-lived because I do tend to drop them a lot. Hard to blame Apple for that. So I got another MacPro laptop. But this time, I didn't go for the top of the line with the largest possible retina display (it doubles as a work computer). Finally accepting that I am so hard on laptops, I opted for the smallest, cheapest variety, and then got a big fancy screen for the desktop that I can plug it into. Win win. My computers are subsidized by work, so I have the luxury of not worrying too much about the price. I worry more about ease of use and losing time when something goes wrong. I think I've got the right arrangement now! phew. More than you wanted to know, right? Haha, sorry.

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  3. I am looking forward to not having to chop the ice out around my gates. You give me hope... I'm interested in buying one of your pygora fleeces, if you are selling them - I'd be happy to support you as a farm business!

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    1. Oh bless you! I will happily be your pygora supplier. :) I'm still working through the kinks of how to produce good ones. I don't want to spoil things, so to speak, by selling second-rate fleeces in the beginning. I'm getting closer though. Stay tuned!

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