It's that time of year -- time to cuddle up with a few good catalogs in front of the fire. The garden catalogs have already started to arrive, and yesterday I scored big when I found one of those freezer-bag-food-sealer-thingies for $17.49!!! Those things normally sell for about $50, but who would want one in December, right? It had already been marked down to $34.99. I'm glad I didn't see it then, because I would have snatched it up at that price. Now that we're growing more of our own food, we can certainly use one of those because it seals the food and prevents freezer burn. I know Ziploc wants you to believe that they do that, but they don't. Six-month-old vegetables look like a block of ice in a Ziploc bag.
Last night's temperature was 3 degrees Fahrenheit. 'Tis definitely time to be staying inside. The wood stove is running constantly now, and I should be sticking a chicken in the oven for lunch, instead of blogging. I also have a big pile of grading to finish. This is the last week of school for me, and then I can focus on Christmas baking and gift making.
Over the Christmas holidays, Mike is going to finish the bookcases for the library. Yes, we have been in this house for four years, and it's not done. He did half of the bookcases two years ago during Christmas break, then last year we decided to go on a vacation. That was a mistake. He got another pair of bookcases stained but didn't get the poly on them, so they've sat in the shed office for the past year.
I am also hoping we will get a couple of goat kidding pens completed in that building. I would love to be able to sit in the warm office and watch goats in labor through the window, rather than sitting in the straw with them for hours and hours, feeling my butt freeze and my nose go numb. It would also be preferable to listening to a baby monitor in the house and then running through the snow when I hear a goat scream. Every year, Sherri kids in the middle of the night in January. And being the stoic mom that she is, she makes no sound at all until the head is coming out. Then I fly out of bed, pull on the clothes that were sitting next to the bed, and run to the barn. As I open the door, I hear the kid screaming. On those cold winter nights, a wet kid can get hypothermia and die pretty quickly.
It happened last winter when I was at school. I don't want it to ever happen again, so the new system is as much for the human kids as it is for me. If they can sit out there in a warm room, hopefully they won't miss any births when I'm not at home. Of course, they're not going to be here much longer -- college acceptance letters for Margaret have started arriving -- but that's a post for another day.
2 comments:
What will you do without your right-hand woman???
I don't know. Like I said, that's a post for another day. She has been accepted to Illinois State for a degree in biochemistry. She is also applying to engineering programs, but her first choice has a January deadline, so we won't be hearing from them for a while. Then we have to wait for financial aid awards letters in the spring. I definitely need to start selling goats though!
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