Time keeps a-tickin'

I've been so neglectful of my little blog here lately. It seems that the only time I have in front of the computer is when I'm nursing a baby. Of course, it didn't help that we went over our download limit and our provider slowed our connection down to just a hair faster than a dead stop. Thankfully, it is up to speed again, and while it's not the fastest connection ever, it's much better than practically running backwards. And so, I'll attempt to do one of those "catch-up" posts.

Winter has definitely arrived here. While going out to milk yesterday morning, I had to knock ice out of a bucket. Everything was in a frenzy trying to get things done before the freeze. We moved the rabbits back into their winter home in the barn, in cages hanging on the walls. We laid a nice thick layer of straw down in both the barn and coop and put in all the water defrosters. We unhooked and rolled up all the hoses and put away all the summer rabbit and chicken tractors. And we purchased a big load of brome and alfalfa hay for the winter.

The garden is not as ready as I had hoped it would be this fall. We were completely overrun with grass this year because we didn't remove it, so we decided to slice the sod off and get rid of it in an attempt to start fresh next year. We rented a sod cutter from Menard's and then went to town. After Don cut it all, we spent the next 4 days out in the garden rolling it up, throwing it into the pickup truck, driving it out to our pasture, and dumping it in depressions in the ground. I tried to use the pregnancy as an excuse to get out of it, but apparently, I'm not quite as delicate in my 4th pregnancy and they all told me to get back to work. Abby spent much of her time watching us from her stroller and then riding in the front of the pickup...without a carseat...while we drove through the pasture. She had a grand time. It's one more thing about living in the country that I enjoy. Unfortunately, however, we did not get all the sod removed before the nearly week-long rain came. We still have probably 1/5th left. But given that the garden is more than 5 times the footprint of our house, I'm still happy with what we did accomplish. The funny thing is that this past weekend, as we were talking about all that work, someone said, "Hey, you should've just put a couple of pigs out there...they would've killed and rooted everything up." And then someone else offered us a breeding pair of pigs at an unbelievable price. We kicked ourselves all the way home, but I think we are going to take them up on it. They can finish our job and keep that garden nice and fertilized all winter. We just need to throw up a little shelter for them.

We've been working with an architect for a few weeks now trying to plan an addition to our house to accomodate Don's folks when they get here next September. The poor man...he had no idea what he was getting himself into. Just try fitting 4 adults' demands into a house, 2 of them women with their own separate ideas on how to run a household. After a brutal first round, we've all put our gloves back on and are ready for round two. I just hope no one gets a black eye.

Oh, and I got a lovely new camera. A Nikon D60. I haven't had near the time I need to read the book that came with it and learn how to use all the manual gadgets, but I've so enjoyed playing with it in just auto mode. Even in auto, I'm getting better pictures than I've ever gotten before. I suppose I could've uploaded one or two, but then I'd probably not get this post finished, so I'll just wait until next time.

And that is that. A lot can happen in just a short time around here, but that is part of what keeps farmlife so exciting!