The Mudroom

I sure do love our Mudroom. At least, I do now. After spending all day getting the big shelf up onto the wall and cleaning it up. Seeing how it is just a lean-to on the back, it would seem an easy task except for two problems. First of all, when I creamed myself in the face with a post a couple of months ago, it threw my neck out. Of course, Judy, the great massage therapist and friend, tried to fix me up, but told me to go directly to the Chiropractor. One month later, with left arm toast, I finally drag myself into John Day to the only Chiropractor in town, Dr. Charles Caughlin.  Fortunately for me, he’s a good one. Whew. As usual, I’ve veered slightly off topic. The upshot is, my left arm is near useless and being left handed, I wasn’t much help to Gene; except of course to tell him what to do.   The second problem is I forgot that the shelf had a top piece which requires a certain amount of space, so once we got the 2 x 4’s we were going to attach to in, I realized that I’d forgetten to include it. Bummer. Out came the crow bar and we had to start all over again. We managed to “git er dun” without injury and now, our hats, gloves and other household minutia has a home on a piece of art. The down side is that it makes the lean-to walls look even worse than they did.

Art shelf in mud room

The shelf was a Christmas gift for Geno made especially by Ted and Judy Lettkeman. They are good friends of mine. Ted is actually one of my oldest friends and my ex-husband. Judy is the best massage therapist ever and a really great mom 2 to my daughter.

A close up of some of the detail on our shelf

After the shelf installation ordeal, it was nothing to put some grippers for the brooms and such on door and then put a splitter on the hot water spigot in the laundry area. This is all part of preparing to leave the animals in the care of someone else. I’ll be doing some consulting in Corvallis at the beginning of next week, then over to Bend to give thanks with my mom, then back to Corvallis so that Geno can go to the civil war game with his fraternity brothers. I will be doing something else, I assure you. So, now, the young man who will be looking after the animals can access hot water for chickens and goats if it is freezing. I do have a deicer on the big watering trough, but both birds and goats benefit from warm water on freezing days. In the case of the chickens, when it’s freezing, like it is tonight, I flip over their shallow water container so that I can refill it the next morning. So far, the water in the barn hasn’t frozen, but I think that it might tonight.

Ms. Butterbrickle, the Grand Dam of the Littleprock Pygora flock, is really looking pregnant now. She even walks like she is pregnant.

Hawk's Mountain Ranch Butterbrickle due to kid between January 10 and 25

Butterbrickle is from one of the best Pygora Breeders on the west coast, Lisa Roskopf. Her place, Hawk’s Mountain Ranch, is really something to see and her Pygoras are exquisite. I bred Butterbrickle to a registered Pygmy, Baba Yaga Farms Desert Suns Royalty Exposed. Since Butterbrickle’s sire was a registered Angora, her kids by Royalty Exposed will fall within the appropriate mix for registration…if they fleece, of course. Both Princess and Pearl were Sired by Royalty Exposed. Pearl’s real name, if you can believe it, is Royal Trouble. Princess’ is Go Royal. You can see by looking at these doelings that it is a crapshot whether I get color or not. Royalty Exposed is a gorgeous caramel with Agouti blood lines, so Princess is a light grey Agouti. Agouti is a pattern type. All agoutis have solid stockings darker than the main body color. Muzzle, forehead, eyes and ears accented in tones lighter than the dark portions of the body. (From PBA handbook) Princess is almost looking like she is going to have type C (straight) fiber, but then again, there is some frizz happening around the neckline, so it’s a hard call at this juncture. But I digress. As usual. Pearl has no color. She takes after her momma’s kin.

Speaking of the doelings, I stepped out back about a week ago and was astonished to see little Miss Princess perched about half way up the side of the goat shelter. The wind had whipped enough slack into the poor tarp that there was just enough to create little foot pouches in each square of the cattle panel. It would have been hilarious, except even as I watched, the top of the much beaten tarp began to slowly separate until it was held together, barely, by about 10% of the weave left intact. Needless, to say, I had to take it down. I put up a much smaller shelter up against the building shed as a temporary measure,

a small goat shelter

then turned my attention to creating a study play structure for the kids. Thanks to some of the more interesting detritus that we kept around, I was able to create a platform. Princess and Pearl really think they are royalty now, although I know that when my daughter sees this picture, she will tease me about raising seals…or she might even hint that they look like yummy goat dinners.   But, a lot of what looks like fat on Pearl  is fleece.

The Royals: Princess and Pearl

I must be careful not to congratulate myself to often in these pages as just the other night, after I posted my comment that food training works, all three goats decided that no, they did not want to go in the barn, even for yummy rolled COB (corn oats barley). I think I may be getting smarter, because I just said okay and shooed them back into the big field. Tonight, they went in just fine. I figure they have enough fiber on those bodies to stay plenty warm when it’s not storming and it was a beautiful night last night. Tonight, it was cold and clear about two hours ago, but the weather moves through here at unbelievable speeds sometimes, so I am curious if we will have rain or snow by morning. we shall see. And speaking of weather, being a sky freak, here are a couple of shots of beautiful sky. Wish I could do them more justice, but you get the idea.

Sunrise

Moonrise